I've become a really big fan of Penny Arcade this year. I read it like... three times a week. Sometimes I look through the archives to see what I missed back when I didn't know of PA's existence. These are a couple of my absolute favorites.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/07/29

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/05

Posted by ra in other geeky stuff at 22:22 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

After my last energy-related post, I bought a cool little device that allows me to measure power consumption of everyday electrical devices. I've been testing various computers, appliances and electronics that I have or have access to, in order to discover just how power hungry they are.

Some of the surprises included my Pentium 4 file server which uses only about 40 W, a dual processor Pentium III server which uses a whopping 175 W, and a small stereo system which uses about 22 W in standby mode! Just how much power do you need to watch for a button press from the remote control?!

Interesting statistics after the jump.

Posted by ra in other geeky stuff at 01:40 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Although I had been planning to buy one for a while, it wasn't until yesterday after I placed an order for Wii Play at Amazon that I decided we should go ahead and acquire a Wii. Phone calls to the usual suspects yesterday turned up nothing. I decided to strike again today at lunch time. Bingo! My first call, to Meijer, confirmed that they had just ONE in stock. I raced over, ran in, and asked if they still had it. "Are you the person who just called?" they asked. Yup, I said. "That was fast!" they replied.

Posted by ra in other geeky stuff at 18:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I'm interested in energy efficiency, which is why I have been gradually replacing the incandescent light bulbs in our house with compact fluorescents, or CF's. We had already been using fluorescents where possible, usually tubes or circular shapes, but now that CF's have gone mainstream, almost any incandescent bulb is a candidate for replacement. The difference in energy usage is phenomenal. I have been replacing 40W bulbs with 9W ones; 60W with 13W and 100W with 23W. I'm amazed that the light output of the new bulbs is just as good as the old ones. It really shows how much energy is wastefully and undesirably used to make heat in an incandescent bulb.

Posted by ra in other geeky stuff at 23:18 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)